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Tamkeen in Arabic means“empowerment” (or “enablement”) — thus the perfect name for a business initiative that the Israel office of Cisco Systems has been funding and operating for the past two years for Palestinian entrepreneurs. While the program’s details have received scant attention in the news media – even, surprisingly, in the Israeli press – they have the potential to help transform a fledgling Palestinian tech community into a future regional powerhouse.

And, to say the least, that would be great news for an entire Middle East that has been mired in conflict and economic disparities for nearly a century.

Not long ago, this reporter journeyed to the Holy Land to see what Cisco and the Palestinians were up to. [Forbes published a lengthy account of the trip here, which includes additional photographs.] The visit included stops at Intel in Jerusalem, which is pioneering outsourcing programs with Palestinian companies. In Ramallah, which is emerging as the West Bank’s tech capital, I dined in a fashionable restaurant with a group of Palestinian entrepreneurs – soaking up the excitement of their start-ups and their future ideas and dreams.

But it was near the Dead Sea, in separate locations (including the ancient city of Jericho), that I sat inside two Tamkeen.Net training sessions – in rooms filled with Palestinian CEOs and mid-level managers being coached by Israeli Jewish tech experts. The Cisco subcontractor conducting the sessions – aptly named PosiTeam – has conducted close to 100 days of trainings since 2011 – for 70 Palestinians from 24 different companies.

If a fly on the wall would expect to witness harsh glares, and disagreements about borders, blockades and the pending resumption of peace talks, that fly would have landed in the wrong place. It’s all business inside PosiTeam –- complex powerpoints about new-product development, discussions about branding, marketing and sales. If you’re not versed in project management jargon, you’d be lost in about ten minutes – as I was.

“We are building up the capacity of these companies and helping them to compete globally,” says Tammy Avigdor, a former Cisco senior manager who co-founded PosiTeam with Avital Brown, an education consultant (and a close friend from their elementary school days in Israel.) To recruit the companies for the program, they turned to a West Bank consulting firm called LionHeart, whose CEO and deputy director — Palestinians Sam Hussieni and Rima Shehadeh –- have been working overtime to make sure such a sensitive initiative is successful.

So far they have lots to be proud of. Five years ago, when Cisco began its initiatives in the West Bank, the ICT sector’s contribution to the Palestinian GDP was less than 1%. With help from the likes of Cisco and PosiTeam, as well as Intel, that figure is now over 6%.

Cisco-Israel senior executives Zika Abzuk (left) and Gai Hetzroni (right) inside one of the company's many networking labs in Netanya, Israel. "We are always trying to think of new programs to overturn the barriers," says Abzug. (Photo by Heidi Levine/Sipa Press)

The latent talent is certainly there. For one thing, Palestinians boast among the highest rate of college graduates in the entire Arab world. Moreover, they’re wired up and ready to go. One recent study found that cell phone penetration is 95% in the West Bank, with half of them smartphones.

To show how serious Cisco and the PosiTeam instructors are, the Palestinian CEOs who attend the monthly sessions are required to have most of their managers participate, too. That fits in with the holistic worldview of Cisco CEO John Chambers — that each piece of a corporate (or society) ecosystem has to be addressed and improved for any real and lasting progress to be made. Otherwise the world is just spinning its wheels.

The story began in 2008, when Chambers took a trip to Ramallah to see Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. During the meeting, he pledged $10 million to help develop the West Bank’s tech ecosystem. The question was how exactly to go about it. Just what did the Palestinians want and need? Cisco went on a mission to meet Palestinian entrepreneurs and ask them directly. “I personally went to Cisco and said, ‘Forget about donating; allocate part of the money and help us create jobs,” says Tariq Maayah, a top Palestinian entrepreneur and business leader who today does cutting-edge R&D outsourcing to Cisco-Israel and HP (via his company, Exalt Technologies.)

Cisco bought the idea. And the multinational subsidized the cost (alleviating the final risk) of having individual business units within Cisco-Israel outsource R&D to promising Palestinian companies. Only then, if those units liked and benefitted from the experiences, they would continue working with those Palestinians without a subsidy. And they have.

“When we started talking with Palestinian government and private sector leaders, what they said they really wanted and needed was to start a high-tech industry just like Israel’s was maybe 30 years ago,” says Zika Abzuk, the Cisco-Israel senior manager assigned by Chambers to oversee the initiative. “They said, ‘We don’t want you to give us charity, we want you to eventually be able to come and do business with us—that’s our dream. We need your help in changing Palestine’s image as a place open for business.’”

Cisco set about interviewing candidates – in a room in a lobby in an old, modest hotel in East Jerusalem. It didn’t always go smoothly, however. Abzuk, led a team that interviewed entrepreneurs from 20 Palestinian firms, ultimately selecting only three (including Maayah) for the outsourcing program.

“Out of the 20 companies, most of them didn’t really know how to speak to us, they didn’t have any experience working with the international market,” recalls Gai Hetzroni, a top Cisco R&D manager. “They spoke English, but they didn’t speak thelanguage – the high-tech language. Some of them came dressed very well, they said ‘hello’ very well, they showed a very nice picture – but they didn’t know what project management is, what Agile [software] is, or how to manage groups of engineers.”

Nonetheless, some of the rejected Palestinian companies complained to their industry’s association in Ramallah that they didn’t get their piece of the $10 million Cisco outsourcing pie. “They wanted their share,” says Hetzroni. “They felt they deserved it. They didn’t really understand the business issue behind it. So we though that one of the things we can help them with is capacity building, prepare them working in the international market, and teach them how to speak the hi-tech language. So this is what Tamkeen is all about.”

The Tamkeen.Net instructors are all Israeli-Jews, but that hasn’t posed a problem. “We didn’t find any Palestinian experts with the kind of credentials or backgrounds we needed,” explains Hetzroni, “and to bring them from the [United] States would be too expensive, so we have to use the Israeli Jews. Because we have plenty of those in Israel.”

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Well done Cisco , PosiTeam , and Lion Heart , I think this is the way to do it, Palestinians taking the knowledge and the knowhow of the Israeli experience in Hi Teach, to benefit and grow the Palestinian high tech industry, just imagine if there will be peace and they can work together on projects… I imagine it was not easy but thanks to people like that there are benefits to the whole region , I am waiting now to hear about the next project together